Nikola Pasic

Nikola Pasic (18 December 1845-10 December 1926) was Prime Minister of Serbia from 23 February 1891 to 22 August 1892 (succeeding Sava Grujic and preceding Jovan Avakumovic), from 10 December 1904 to 28 May 1905 (succeeding Grujiv and preceding Ljubomir Stojanovic), from 29 April 1906 to 20 July 1908 (succeeding Grujic and preceding Petar Velimirovic), from 24 October 1909 to 4 July 1911 (succeeding Stojan Novakovic and preceding Milovan Milovanovic), and from 12 September 1912 to 1 December 1918 (succeeding Marko Trifkovic. He was also Prime Minister of Yugoslavia from 1 to 22 December 1918 (preceding Stojan Protic), from 1 January 1921 to 28 July 1924 (succeeding Milenko Vesnic and preceding Ljubomir Davidovic), and from 6 November 1924 to 8 April 1926 (succeeding Davidovic and preceding Nikola Uzunovic).

Biography
Nikola Pasic was born in Zajecar, Principality of Serbia in 1845, and he studied engineering in Belgrade and Zurich, where he became interested in politics. First elected to the Serbian Parliament in 1878, he founded the People's Radical Party in 1881 and was exiled from 1883 to 1889 due to his opposition to the King, Milan I of Serbia. He dominated Serbian politics from 1891, when he first became Prime Minister, until his death. He pursued the policy of creating a Greater Serbia, to which end he led his country through the Balkan Wars of 1912-13. In 1917, he skillfully negotiated the Corfu Pact, which effectively provided for the creation of a Serb-dominated Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Yugoslavia from 1929) after the end of World War I. As Prime Minister of the new kingdom, he furthered Serbian predominance with considerable success, despite the domestic tensions which this caused. He died in 1926.